


Admissions

by wanderingempress



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: Aftermath, F/F, Sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-28
Updated: 2015-06-02
Packaged: 2018-02-27 07:35:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 18,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2684585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wanderingempress/pseuds/wanderingempress
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-35. Betty, confused and disoriented, tries to piece things together in order to make sense of the world of sadness she's unexpectedly woken up into and take responsibility for her own role in recent events.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

I stared at each of them in bewilderment, but I tried not to let it show. This was not my tour group, and this was not the library. They were grimmer and bloodier and more violent than my tour group, for one thing. And also, this outfit didn’t really seem like mine either.

When they finally dispersed, they left me in the room with the girl named Laura, telling me that this had been _my_ room for a while, a revelation that made Laura start crying again and confused me further. I didn’t remember this room. I remembered being annoyed at my parents for insisting that I apply to Silas and wondering who that big guy with the pink underpants on his shirt was. I didn’t remember this room, and I didn’t remember Laura.

Apparently Silas had accepted me, it would seem. And I’d been crazy enough to enroll.

I took a deep breath and tried not to sound too exasperated as I let it out. Maybe if I focused my thoughts on what exactly I’d say to my parents when I called them the next day to find out what had come over me, having lost months of time would cease to be so terrifying.

No, it was still terrifying. There’s something about losing time, I think, where, once it’s happened once, there’s immediately a question in every passing moment. Was I here? Was I me? Would anyone have noticed?

Laura was watching me, I saw, somewhat expectantly. I supposed that I should probably say something, since I’d gathered that she’d done something, that they’d all done something, at great cost, to save me from some kind of evil. But what could I say to her? I sat down at her—our?—desk and smiled weakly at her.

The really tall redhead, Danny, came back, then, still bloody and solemn, but her bun now undone to free long, gorgeous hair. She closed the door softly behind her, then stood in front of it as if on guard. “It’s good to have you back,” she said, looking over at me.

“It’s good to be back,” I lied. Or at least, I wasn’t sure if it was true. Probably not as true as they thought it was. “Thank you for saving me.”

Someone knocked on the door, and Laura jumped. I saw her eyes flash to it, her heart gathered up hastily in her questioning look.

Danny opened it, and behind it, the girl who got really excited about stakes, Perry, held two mugs of hot chocolate, one in her hand, one gripped awkwardly in the crook of her elbow.

Laura slumped a little lower as Perry approached and handed her one of the mugs. She gave the other to me with a warm smile, then turned back to my…my roommate, I guess.

“Laura.” It was slightly sharp and maternal, but also soft, and the sound made Laura look up, hands wrapped around the mug, knees drawn up to her chest. “I’ve emailed your professors, and you’re not going to class for at least the next two weeks.”

Somehow, Laura still had the energy to look afraid of this. I couldn’t quite believe it. Sure, I was studious, and I didn’t even know what had happened, really, but even I could tell that missing class didn’t matter at a time like this. I wondered what had made her so determined to keep up, but then realized that I didn’t know what classes were like either—so maybe it did make sense.

“Danny,” she said urgently, turning to look up at the tall girl, who moved to stand next to Perry. “There’s that paper that’s due—”

“You have an extension,” Danny said. Then, her voice quavering, “How could you even think I’d still care about that? Don’t worry about it, Laura.”

“There is absolutely no reason to concern yourself with such things,” Perry said, nodding emphatically. “You’re not going. This is final.” She crossed to the doorway. “I’ll be back tomorrow morning, with breakfast, which you will eat.”

Now it was just Danny, Laura, me, and a thick and heavy silence. Danny made a move to approach Laura, reaching out, but she stopped short and her hand hovered uncertainly in the air for a moment.

“So…um, I know that we kind of haven’t been on the best of terms…” Danny faltered as Laura’s watery eyes met hers. Exes. Gotcha. I could figure some things out. Shame, they would’ve been cute together. “If you want me to leave you alone…”

“No,” Laura whispered, looking away then back up at Danny. “Please stay?”

“You’re sure?”

“Please?”

Danny nodded. “Okay. I’ll stay.” She crossed over to Laura and bent down to hug her. “I’ll be right back, okay?”

Laura looked up at her.

“I promise.”

As Danny left, I wanted to say something—“I’ll look after her,” or “I’ll be right here.” But the door closed behind her, and even if I could forget about it for a second by playing guessing games with myself, trying to figure out who they all were and how they felt about each other and what had just happened, the reality was that I still didn’t understand. They had all been through something together, something that I, or something in my body, was at the center of.

Laura was staring at me again over the rim of her mug, and the longer she watched me, the more hurt she looked, as if she was beginning to see something, as if I was changing somehow.

“I’m sorry,” I ventured. “I’m sorry you lost her.”

She nodded.

“I’m even more sorry to ask you this, but since you seem to know and I don’t remember at all…who was I?”

“You were my best friend.” Oh, god. My heart sank. Of all the things to forget. “We went to a party one night, and the next morning you were gone. I’ve spent the last few months trying to find you.” I heard the note of accusation, and frankly, I couldn’t blame her. The dark-haired girl with the sword, who Laura obviously had loved, had died to bring me back, and now I still wasn’t back, at least not as Laura had known me.

It was as if somebody had made her a promise that I couldn’t keep, and she’d lost so much in believing in that promise. And now I was in the body of her friend, now I was the impostor.

“I’m so sorry,” I said again. “I’m sorry I don’t remember it. You seem…you seem like someone I would’ve liked. We would’ve been friends.”

Laura acknowledged this with a tiny smile and sipped her hot chocolate, but I kicked myself for sounding so lame. She’d lost someone who sounded like a girlfriend, and that was all I could do? I looked at Laura curled so small, curled around her heartache, trying to swallow around the lump in her throat, and I shook my head. There had to be something more.

I didn’t want to leave her alone, but I went out in the hall and started checking the placards on the doors until I came to the pair I sought. One read “LaFontaine,” with something before it that had been vigorously scribbled out. The other read “Lola Perry, Floor Don,” and it was perfectly level with the floor. I knocked twice.

Perry, who had remained impossibly spotless in battle, answered with her curls in disarray and a distant glimmer of that same look that she’d had when she’d plunged the stake in that guy’s heart. The glimmer faded when she saw me, which was a relief.

“Betty? Is everything all right? What can I do for you?”

LaFontaine appeared behind her. “Hey, zombie buddy. How’s it feel to be back?”

I didn’t know. I avoided the question and asked her instead, “During the time that I don’t remember…the things I said and did, where did they come from? Were they me?”

LaFontaine cocked her head. “Good question. Honestly? I don’t know. That would definitely be something to research further. Not tonight,” she said, at the look Perry gave her, “but soon. There’s a lot about this whole brain parasite thing that we still haven’t figured out yet. Maybe some of it really was us. I bet the Zetas would like to think there’s a party animal in everyone.”

“Is that what I was? A party animal?” Internally, I squirmed a little. I never went to parties. Study parties, maybe, at least the ones where studying actually happened. What else had I done? Laura had known me best, but how many other strangers would greet me as someone I had never been? Forget calling my parents to ask what had happened—what had I already said to them? Party animal? This was all so confusing.

She shrugged. “Kinda. I mean, you did disappear at a party.”

“I know this is going to sound strange,” I said, “but how can I find out? I really don’t remember any of it, and Laura’s starting to realize that, and if I could somehow…” What? Be myself?

“I remember,” Perry said. “Even though you managed to miss every one of the freshman check-ins so far—”

“Perr, everybody does that.” LaFontaine took her arm. “You schedule them for like six or seven in the morning. Plus,” she said, grinning a little, “cut her a break—she doesn’t _remember_!”

“Even though you did that,” Perry went on, ignoring her, “I remember you. And if you’d like me to help you talk to other people you might have met, we can find out more. But at the same time,” she said, something coming into her voice that I couldn’t quite identify, maybe a nervousness that didn’t make sense, “if that’s not who you are, then you shouldn’t feel like you have to be that person, even if that’s who Laura knows you as.”

I thought I saw LaFontaine squeeze her arm, and Perry covered her hand with her own.

“That might be a good idea,” I said. “Thanks for everything. And thanks for taking this all in stride. It’s got to seem so weird to you, me coming and asking you things like this.”

LaFontaine and Perry looked at each other. LaFontaine’s face broke into a growing smile, and Perry giggled. Perry looked back at me, but apparently my past self had been a heck of a comedian, because the mere sight of me gave rise to another burst of giggles.

“Good night,” I said, bemused, as I turned back to Laura’s room.

Danny met me outside her door, and the look she shot me was unmistakable: _you left her alone!_ But she spared me only that instant as she rushed inside. I followed, my mind made up. I knew what I had to do.

Laura hadn’t moved, and her mug was nearly as full as it had been when I’d left.

“Hey.” Danny made a beeline for Laura. “Hey. I’m back. Just like I said I would be.”

Laura looked up and saw me move out from behind Danny and take a seat at the desk again, and I saw the accusation renewed in her eyes. I made a note to myself: leaving, terrible idea. Especially after all they’d gone through to bring me back. Whoever I turned out to be, Laura’s friend or not, I wouldn’t go far.

Danny bent over Laura and took the mug from her hands. She set it down on the desk, where a glass with what looked like congealed blood in the bottom sat next to the computer. Laura’s eyes followed the mug, landed on the glass, and filled with tears.

“How’s it going?” Danny said. Part of me thought that this was a stupid thing to say, but part of me understood: she was trying to get Laura to talk.

“It hurts,” Laura whimpered, drawing her knees even closer to herself now that her hands were free.

Danny watched her for a second, then seemed to come to a decision. She sat on the bed next to Laura, close but not touching her. I saw her hesitate, then lay her hands in her lap.

“Laura,” I said. “I just want to say, again, how sorry I am that I don’t remember.” It was beginning to sink in, the idea that whoever I had been, I had been important enough to her for her to assemble an army to come get me. Even if I was still confused, I was touched. “But if it means that you didn’t lose Carmilla for nothing, if it helps at all, I could try to figure out who we were, or who we are.” I looked at Laura’s broken face and Danny still too afraid to touch her. No, that wasn’t enough. “I mean, I _will_. Laura, I know you’re going through hell right now, but if you want me to, if you’ll let me, I’ll be your friend again. You don’t have to say anything tonight, but I’m going to try, _try_ to be the person you wanted to save.” I found myself desperate to ease even the slightest bit of her pain, almost willing to give myself to that promise that I’d unknowingly made her, even despite Perry’s cautions.

Laura softened. Danny was looking at me with approval, maybe pride. _Thank you_ , she mouthed. I gladly accepted it, feeling like I’d finally done something right.

Laura opened her mouth to speak, but she shook her head, a choked sob displacing her words. “I should be happy that we won. I should be happy that you and the other girls are back and that you’re willing to do that. I’m sorry. But—” Her eyes landed on the glass behind me again, and the sight stung her.

Danny had been glancing at Laura’s right hand on her knees, at her pained face, at her hand again. As Laura’s mind flooded with her loss, Danny reached over, slowly, hesitantly, as if Laura might flinch away in an instant. I realized that I was watching with bated breath; it was so suspenseful to see the once-confident warrior now unsure of herself.

At the touch, Laura dissolved into tears, pulling her hand away. Danny made to back off, apologetic, but Laura flung herself upon her, burying her face against her neck. Danny put her arms around her, still tentative. Laura fumbled with her blankets, and Danny caught on: although doubt lingered in her eyes, she slid her own legs under the covers and pulled them over the two of them.

“I miss her,” Laura whimpered. “I miss her already.”

Danny stroked Laura’s hair, blinking away tears. “I know,” she said, voice breaking. “So—so do I. I didn’t even know until—I mean, all this time, I thought—“ Her breathing grew shallow, and she pulled Laura closer. “I’m sorry, to both of you. I was wrong. I didn’t know.”

Okay, so, Laura and Carmilla were in love, and Danny was Laura’s ex who wasn’t over her, but what had Danny and Carmilla been to each other? Danny seemed almost mad at herself for something. I wasn’t sure why.

“I’m so sorry,” Danny said, now crying openly, that strange blend of anger and regret still rising in her voice. “I—I misjudged her, and I never got a chance to tell her.”

“I did too,” Laura said, and something about this confession struck both of them, although it was lost on me.

“Do you think she knew?” Danny asked quietly.

Laura suddenly clung to her as if this question was too much to bear, as if it stirred some great fear within her. “I don’t know. I thought she did. I hope she did. Oh god, what if she didn’t know that— _what if she didn’t know?_ ”

Danny’s teary eyes flickered up to me, and I noticed that I’d been just sitting there watching them, which was probably a bit awkward. But which was also scary because I’d lost track of myself and maybe only gotten lucky that I was still in the same place and that no more than a few minutes had passed. I stood and approached the other bed, noting that this Carmilla girl read a lot of existentialists, which—okay, sure. And leopard-print sheets, huh? Not exactly my style, but not horrible either. Laura, hearing me move, turned a little to look at me.

As soon as I sat down on the bed, I knew that this was a mistake. But as Laura watched me lower myself to the floor instead and her face crumpled in on itself, I noted that this, for some reason, wouldn’t work either. Danny observed my predicament and dug into her pockets.

“Here,” she said, holding out her keys. “Do you remember seeing a big house at the edge of a dense forest a little way past the library?”

I nodded as I took them. Laura and Danny probably wouldn’t make me leave, but I didn’t have a place there. All the same, being alone made me nervous.

“Go there, and tell the sisters there that I sent you. You can stay in my room. Nobody there has ever met you, so you won’t have a history to deal with. They can keep an eye on you, and you’ll be completely safe. Just—call in the morning. Let us know you’re still there.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I’ll do that.” I didn’t mention it, but I was glad that she’d asked me to—I didn’t like the idea of disappearing again. I turned to the wardrobe and opened it, looking to see if I’d managed to pack any of my own clothes when I moved to Silas. Nah, never mind that. Maybe I’d find myself liking whatever was in there anyway, provided it wasn’t Carmilla’s.

I looked back at the room—half of it that was supposedly but not really mine and that I didn’t recognize, half of it occupied by Danny and Laura and the memory of Carmilla. Waves of sobs rose in the air again, and my own eyes stung as I reflected that the girl who had given her life for mine was still such a stranger to me that I knew little more about her than her taste in books. Leaving Danny and Laura clinging to each other in shared grief for their lost hero, I closed the door quietly behind me. I would be back soon.


	2. Chapter 2

You know, I think I’d heard before about how this sometimes happened in college, waking up unexpectedly in a bed that wasn’t yours without much memory of the night before. But I had my clothes on still, and no hangover, so maybe I’d fared relatively well.

This looked to be a girl’s room, although it looked as if the girl hadn’t been there recently (well, that happened too in college, I supposed, so it wouldn’t have been a big deal if she had been). A pair of long lilac pants lay bunched up on the floor, and a towel hung on the windowsill—wait, her window was open? In winter? Well, it was dry now anyway, so I went over, shut the window, folded the towel, set it on her dresser. Surely she’d appreciate the little bit of help, a gesture of thanks for letting me sleep in her bed. I stooped and made to pick up the pair of lilac pants—hey, once you get started, it’s hard to stop—but something caught my eye.

Her desk existed in the same state of casual, middling untidiness as the rest of her room. A variety of papers mingled across small but rapidly fusing stacks, and three snapped pencils shared space with an unwashed mug and a solitary, nearly blank sheet that bore the cramped graphite words _Just get it done._ To the right of this exhibit of frustrated scholarship, the thing that had attracted my attention: an even row of stakes of pale wood, sharpened to perfection, that all pointed toward me.

Something was beginning to come back to me, and I wasn’t sure how I felt about the knowledge that the weird stakes were the reason why. But then I saw the baseball bat tucked in the corner like it wasn’t waiting for the next game. And the unstrung bow leaned against the nightstand. And with the window now closed, the smell of raw garlic wafted toward me from an unknown source.

It came back. Danny, the battle, a ton of vampires, making my cautious way across campus to this house in the dark, meeting my former roommate who I could barely—oh god.

I may have panicked at the realization of my latest spell of amnesia. I may have dashed to the window and stared out at the woods like Rapunzel in her tower, may have looked in the unwashed mug to see if there was anything good in there, may have started searching frantically for clothes that I was already wearing and keys that I was suddenly convinced that I should have. Honestly, it happened pretty fast but went on for some time, and the precise events are a little fuzzy.

Eventually, I found my phone, called the number saved under “Laura Hollis,” and said, “Hey, this is Betty.”

“Hey.” The voice on the other end sounded tired but attentive. “Good morning. Did you sleep okay?”

“I think so. How is Laura?”

“She…” Danny paused. I waited for what could only be bad news. “We’re managing. Thanks.”

“I don’t remember,” I blurted out, the fear rising suddenly, all of the pieces falling together into a disturbing whole. “Again. When I woke up, I had no idea where I was.” Danny started to say something, but I went on. “What if it wasn’t just something weird in my brain for a couple of months? What if something about what they did to me actually broke my brain? What if I _keep forgetting?_ ”

To my relief, Danny didn’t sound frightened—although perhaps she was too tired for that. For whatever reason, she sounded confident, stable. “Betty. You’re not alone. We’re going to help you figure this out. Okay?”

I nodded, then realized that she was still waiting for my answer. “Okay.”

“You’re safe right now. The girls in that house would defend you with their lives if it came down to it.” I heard a hint of pride in her voice, and I found myself intrigued by the statement. Danny had come to Laura’s rescue armed to the teeth, but so much of her arsenal still surrounded me, and it sounded like she wasn’t an anomaly here.

“Should I come to breakfast?”

“If you want to. It’s up to you. If you do, Perry will, as you may remember, insist that you actually eat something. But you can also stay there and hunt around in the fridge until you figure out what you feel up for.”

“I think I might do that.”

“Just, one thing. Whatever you do, don’t touch Claire’s yogurt, or she’ll kill you.”

Was she serious? I wasn’t sure. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

“As for your memory—I know it probably seems terrifying right now, but we _will_ figure things out. I suggest you go talk to Elsie. She lives—lived? Lives? Whatever. She’s across the hall from me, and before she disappeared, she’d usually be coming back from her morning run at about this time. She might be able to help you.”

“I think I remember her. I’ll see if she’s in. Thanks again—I know you guys are going through a lot right now, and—”

“Hey. So are you. Don’t worry about it. Let me know how things turn out. Just so you know, I think Laura might like to see you again, but it’s also okay if you’re not ready for that yet.”  
“I’ll let you know.”

As soon as the call ended, the fear seemed to take me over again, stronger this time. I couldn’t stop staring at the bat and the bow. What was this place, and why was I just accepting it all like it was normal or okay? All this talk of defending lives and killing, some girl who seriously thought she was a vampire and who had _died_ the night before, and me standing in the room of this Danny chick with all the stakes and the random other weapons and telling her everything about how I didn’t remember—what? If my resurfacing memories of the previous day were any indication, maybe it was for the _best_ that I couldn’t remember the last several months. But to think months of amnesia were a blessing!

I was losing my mind, clearly. Or they were losing theirs. Or they were already crazy and I was starting to believe them. I didn’t even know. None of it made sense.

 _You promised Laura_ floated through my mind. I brushed off the trivial thought. Screw Laura. She was probably already too deep into whatever was going on. Yeah, I’d promised her something, but I hadn’t been thinking straight. I had to get out, now, before anything else happened. If I wasn’t already too fucked-up to be normal again. Oh god, what if I was? What if I couldn’t transfer? Dammit, I’d earned Princeton, and to lose it because of some as-yet unexplained mental break...it wasn’t fair.

Okay. My priorities were still all wrong. I needed a plan. Call my parents. Have them buy a plane ticket, initial destination “far away from here,” the unimportant details to be figured out later, the ultimate destination to be home. But first, get out of this house. Danny had said “safe,” but that probably actually meant “trapped.” Get out _now_.

I fled from Danny’s bedroom, and I would have continued on down the stairs, out of the house, and in the general direction of the administration building, but I soon saw that my path was blocked by a pair of people just past the front door.

From the top of the stairs, I had a clear view of Elsie being almost completely engulfed by a girl about a foot taller than her with a tight, high ponytail and no intention of letting go.

(In a room nearby, somebody asked, “Fuuuck, why do I hurt all over, and where did this blood come from? What did we get up to last night? Was it your idea?” I shuddered.)

Elsie struggled to break free. “God, Claire, chill. I’m alive.”

“You can’t just disappear again!”

“I…didn’t? I went for a run? Like I always do?” The exposed part of Elsie’s face showed dawning realization. “Ohhh. Is this because of the stupid parasite thing?”

“’The stupid parasite thing’? You idiot! You could have died!”

“Well, yeah, that’s what it is to be alive every day. You could die. Big deal.” Elsie overcame Claire’s hold and glared at her. “Go away. I’m _fine_.”

Claire huffed, turned on her heel, and strode into an adjoining room.

Elsie saw me at the top of the stairs. “Oh hey, Betty. I guess we didn’t give you an official welcome last night, and since Tall, Dark and Bossy is out of commission for at least the next few minutes, the duty falls to me. So, yeah, this is the Summer Society. Make yourself at home.”

I couldn’t speak. My escape had already been thwarted. I scanned my surroundings for another way out. Windows were not optimal, but…

Elsie gave me an appraising look. “All right, we should talk. Come on.”

She led me to her room and closed the door behind us. It sounded loudly in my ears. I tiptoed from island to island of bare carpet amid the sea of discarded clothes. She plopped herself down on her bed and patted a spot next to her. “Let’s hash this out. How you doing?”

I made it to the bed and sat down. “I…I think I’m doing okay?” This was a lie.

“Okay, well, that’s good…”

“But I don’t know if I am.” This was also a lie. I was _not_ okay, and I knew it. But Elsie’s weapons weren’t neatly put away or readily visible, and for all I knew, maybe she was as dangerous as the rest of them. The bouquet of violets on her desk seemed to suggest otherwise, but I’d best play it safe nonetheless.

“Oh?”

“I was infected for so long, and then this morning, I woke up and I thought I’d forgotten all about last night. I keep thinking that if I don’t watch myself every minute, it could happen again. And what if I’m still forgetting even now? What if I’m not even myself right now, and I ‘wake up’ somewhere random and find out that this was some sort of dream, or what if I ‘wake up’ there and I don’t even remember this because it didn’t happen and I was actually somewhere else doing who knows what the whole time?” If I did it just right, I could go from sounding matter-of-fact to sounding increasingly anxious without letting the thoughts penetrate too deeply. I could play along with this weirdness.

“Girl, breathe.” Elsie drew her legs up and crossed them. She’d bought it. “Not remembering last night? That’s your brain going, ‘holy fuck, I don’t know how to make sense of that.’ It’s normal, and it happens. You’ll catch up.”

“How can you sound so calm about all this?”

She shrugged. “Well, losing my shit about it isn’t going to help, is it? Sorry, that was probably unfair. You’ve been through a lot, and we all deal differently.”

Fine. She seemed nice so far. I’d go on humoring her. “How do you do it?”

“I guess I’m just letting things happen how they will. I know who I used to be, and that wasn’t that long ago, so I’m just like, I’ll go back to doing that and if it turns out that I did something _really_ weird when I wasn’t myself, I’ll deal with it when it comes up.” She studied me closely. “I mean, I get why you’re freaked. You lost a _lot_ of time, and maybe you were somebody totally different then, and that’s pretty fucking rough. Me?” She laughed. “I figure that if I don’t end up having failed any classes or gotten with one of those gross alchemy dudes with the mushroom fixation, there’s not much else that can go wrong.”

No. I couldn’t do it. It was too much. I bolted, staggering down the stairs, waiting for the sound of her thundering after me. But she didn’t follow.

Claire caught me just before the threshold, hands on my shoulders. She gently turned me around to face her. “Hey. Hey. I’m not going to stop you if you really want to go, but just hear me out for a second, okay?”

I saw Elsie coming down to join us, and I looked up at Claire. She was clearly the more reasonable of the two, even if she, too, was crazy enough to stay. She would also be the bigger obstacle if they decided to keep me from leaving. It might be in my best interest to listen until I came up with a better idea.

“Look, you’re panicking,” Claire said, “and that’s a completely legitimate and sensible thing to do. I don’t fault you in the slightest for being scared shitless and wanting to put as much distance between you and this place as possible.”

She paused, and something in me leapt at her words—thank god somebody could understand it! Even Laura and Danny and the others the night before had seemed strangely composed, and everybody had just commenced going about their business of grief and initial hypotheses and compulsory breakfast as if the whole thing weren’t utterly bizarre and horrifying. Even if Claire’s survival instinct was underdeveloped, it was comforting that she acknowledged mine.

“I get that you want to run,” she reiterated. “And you can. But I think—I _think_ —that if you do, this will follow you.”

“Don’t say that,” I said desperately. “It can’t. It has to stay here.”

“I might be wrong,” she said. “I hope I would be. But I can also see you fleeing with your doubts untouched and still very much alive, going somewhere where I suspect it might be harder to find people who believe you and who understand why you’re so afraid and unsure of yourself. We’ve been dealing with strange things like this for a long time, the current sisters and those who have gone before us, and even if some of us have _absolutely no tact_ , we understand them. I have no doubt that we can look after you if you ask, but I can’t guarantee that you’ll find that kind of understanding where you’re going.”

She had a point. I didn’t even want to believe it myself. Every other moment, I was engaged in a fierce struggle to convince myself that it hadn’t happened and that I’d soon wake up the morning of the tour of Silas, a little shaken but largely unchanged. I’d wake up, refuse to go, and continue my normal life. The possibility that I was dreaming was becoming the only stable thing. If I just remembered the day before the tour, didn’t let myself question whether I’d even been myself then, I had solid ground to stand on. As soon as I moved forward to the day _of_ the tour, all bets were off, and I was adrift again.

I knew I wanted to call my parents, but what was I going to say to them? Would they be afraid of me? Even if they didn’t turn away from me, which they _probably_ wouldn’t, it’d fall on me to tell them how to react, and I had no idea what to do. Claire was giving me options, and making sense, and taking this all seriously, and maybe she could help. I wanted to nod or say something, but I clung to that hope, to the idea that it might still be a horrible dream, and I could barely move.

“I know how it must sound, but I think you’d be more alone out there—although you’re free to disagree. If you can believe for at least a little bit that we’re not all just reckless lunatics,

we might be able to help you make more sense of things before you go. I really believe this is the best place you can be right now.” Claire let go of me. “If you want to leave anyway, I’ll send you on your way with lunch, bus fare, and good luck wishes, but please think it over for a second.”

“Okay.” The word sounded alien to me, like someone else was saying it. “I’ll stay here for now.”

Elsie, I saw, had been watching nervously, and she seemed to relax a little. Claire, mercifully unruffled, said nothing, just waited.

Fresh doubt shot through me. “But what if it happens again?”

Elsie laughed. “Nailed it, girl. Yeah, that’s the one really shitty thing. Like, seriously, I’d probably be okay with whatever I got up to while I was out, and I bet you might be too. But it totally wasn’t our choice to be out. I mean, I’m not gonna lie, I’ve gotten pretty shitfaced before, but after the first couple of times, it was pretty much always on purpose. Just getting knocked out for months, though? Not cool.”

Claire shot her a look that, if I hadn’t still been so disoriented, might have made me question whether these women even needed physical weapons.

Elsie backed away. “Shit. Sorry. That was…definitely not the right thing to say.”

“There has to be a way to protect against it,” I said, my voice still weak and strange, taking stock of our surroundings, cutting the rising fear with the familiar relief of planning. “Staying awake. Rotating guards. An awareness campaign. Audio and video recordings, documentation of some sort. An official buddy system. _Some_ kind of system of checks to make sure—”

“Yeah, the protection is killing the evil thing that possesses people,” Elsie said simply. “Which we did. And if there’s another one, we’ll kill that one too—god, I wish I’d been myself so I could’ve helped out!” She saw me still searching. “Hey, Betty, girl, relax. I know, I’m right there with you, it’s scary as hell, but it’s not all about us figuring out how to defend our brains from surprise evil now. It’s about not having evil things that invade brains around to begin with.”

“Whatever you need,” Claire said, glancing at Elsie in warning. “Elsie’s right, for the most part, but right now, ask for whatever you need to feel safe.”

God, I wanted to believe her. Claire was tall and solid and completely earnest. I wanted to believe she could fix it all. But maybe it was my independent spirit or just unavoidable reality that reminded me that she couldn’t. My brain was mine again, and maybe even I couldn’t undo what had been done to it. I couldn’t forget this, and somehow I felt that I wouldn’t want to forget anything more anyway. Unless it really was a horrible dream. In that case, it needed to end already.

“Thanks,” I said, sounding and feeling a little stronger. “I think I need to…just think for a while?”

“Okay.” Claire nodded. “Do you want to be alone?”

“No!” Everything rose up again. “No,” I said, trying to force it back down.

“Okay.” Claire beckoned insistently at Elsie, and together they silently led me through the house to a room whose walls were covered with high, dark shelves. _The books will protect me too_ , I thought in a flight of fancy that now seems a little ridiculous. Those tall shelves with their tidy, partially alphabetized contents were a bit like Claire somehow.

Elsie turned on a lamp on an end table, filling the room with warm, soft light, and jerked her head toward a door on the far wall. “Immediate access to outside is that way. We passed the kitchen on the left. Also, we have practically everything in here, and you’re welcome to any of it when the mood strikes you.”

“Betty, my grandmother,” Claire said quietly, turning to me, “was Summer Society too, and she disappeared and came back very much the way you did. Her old journals from that time are here.” She sounded suddenly solemn. “If you want me to, when you’re ready, I can find them again, and maybe she can help you. And there have been others who have passed down their stories, who I can find for you.”

I could tell that this old sister hadn’t responded to her experiences with Elsie’s baffling unconcern, and yet somehow the woman had managed well enough since then that Claire had known and loved her decades later. I sat down in a large armchair, fell into it, really, and Claire and Elsie took their places on each side of me, saying nothing.

I could begin to think again after a while of their silence. Maybe there would be a book to distract me for a while, I thought. I considered getting up to peruse the shelves, but instead I sank into my chair with a little more finality and let my eyes rove across the spines from there.

“Hey. I just wanna say one thing,” Elsie said, watching Claire for a reaction. “I know I’m probably an insensitive ass, but just remember this when the time comes: I, we, are completely fine with whoever you turn out to be.”

I laughed, a sharp sound.

“No, seriously, though,” she persisted. “Laura wants you to be somebody, and you want to be somebody, and maybe your parents and everybody else wants you to be somebody, and I don’t care. Really.” Elsie leaned back and gestured vaguely at the ceiling. “Whoever you are, I’m completely cool with it.” Her hand froze in the air. “Well, unless you’re related to the soul-sucking light thing. That’s not okay. But aaaanyone else, go ahead.”

I watched her as she contorted herself in her chair, throwing her legs over the arm, and commenced gazing at the ceiling. She was still so blasé about the whole thing, but at the same time, she seemed genuine, and the way her eyes darted to each door in turn betrayed her care.

I remembered Danny on the phone an eternity ago, saying, “You’re not alone,” and it had seemed like silly, almost empty reassurance when she’d said it, the sort of thing you always said to somebody going through a hard time. But now it echoed in my mind as I sat surrounded by waiting books with Claire and Elsie quietly watching over me, and it seemed truer somehow.

I was still worried, no question. My plans for Princeton might be irreversibly undone, and who knew what else had been lost along with them. I didn’t know who I had appeared to be, or even necessarily who I was now. I couldn’t be sure of my own brain, the one thing I’d always thought would never turn on me. There could still be something wrong with it, something that I couldn’t fix. The fear would come back, and I was in for a long and painful journey that I hadn’t chosen, one that might still make me bolt out that back door. And, as relatively trivial as it was, I remembered that I’d made Laura a promise last night, one I might still feel compelled to honor.

But I also made myself a promise right then, one that I was sure I’d keep, Princeton and even Laura be damned, one born not out of last night’s desperation but out of today’s conviction. Whatever I forgot, whoever I became, I’d look after myself, and I’d figure it out. Maybe it wasn’t much, but it was something, something I knew for sure.


	3. Chapter 3

“Did you find the sword?”

Danny looked taken aback, and I couldn’t blame her. Of all the greetings she might have expected upon returning home, I suspected that this hadn’t made the list.

“No,” she said flatly, taking the stairs two at a time.

“Lawrence.”

“What?!” Danny turned to look back down at Claire.

“You need to find it.”

Danny’s eyes flashed as she resumed her climb. “I’d tell you where you could stick it,” she muttered, “but there’s already something up—” She caught sight of me at the top, and her manner shifted. “Hey, Betty. Another day, huh?”

“Yep. And I actually remember the last few,” I said. “It makes for a nice change.”

“I bet. It’s good to see you adjusting to things.” She reached the top, and we stood facing each other, not sure what else to say.

“Heyyyy! Danny girl!” The question was rendered moot by Elsie, who had been having what seemed to be an absolute blast the past few days, in sharp contrast to my fluctuating periods of bewilderment, fear, and tentative mastery; Danny’s vague phone calls and visits; and Claire’s nearly unbroken stoicism. I’d mostly stayed in, trying to connect as many dots as I could and keep them connected on my own while random tall girls flitted through the house and disappeared into their rooms as if trying not to be seen. Elsie, on the other hand, had been everywhere else, setting out in search of people to help her remember as soon as she was convinced I no longer posed an immediate flight risk.

But now she'd thrown herself at Danny, who caught her in the air, lifted her, spun her. “I’ve missed you! The nights have been so quiet without you around! What have you been up to?”

“You tell me, sister—I haven’t been around for much of it!”

Danny laughed, setting her down. “You goof, I meant the last few days. Since I last saw you.”

Right. Since the memorial thing we’d done for Carmilla. That had been one of my less freaked-out days. Sometimes I still felt that unearthly chill, though, like I wasn't quite alive.

“Ehhh, just trying to remember stuff. I think,” Elsie screwed up her face. “I think I’m doing it wrong, because people are telling me I did things I know I didn’t do. Like, that I would _never_ do, even if I had weird shit in my brain. Even if I had _somebody else’s_ brain.”

“Are you sure?” Danny said, a teasing note in her voice.

“Oh, I’m sure,” Elsie said. “There is no way some of that happened. Like, I found out yesterday that apparently I—” She glanced at me. “Nah, you know what, that’s a story for later. I don’t want to scar the poor freshman any more than I already have.”

Danny raised an eyebrow. “But you will tell me, though? This sounds interesting.”

“You know it.” Elsie headed back to her room. “Just holler.”

“Shall we?” Danny said to me. We went to Danny's room, where she encountered several things in rapid succession.

One, a note taped to her door in a small, even cursive that I suddenly wished were my own:

_Miss Lawrence,_

_Don’t worry about it—it’s in good hands. I congratulate you on your victory and offer my deepest sympathies for your loss._

_Prof Wells_

“How did—did she really—how did she know? What did she do with it?” Danny pulled the note off, turned it over, found no explanation on the back. “And I bet she won’t tell me if I ask, either.” She looked at me. “Sorry. That probably didn’t make sense. Basically it means that Claire’s going to nag me forever and a day about that sword and I probably won’t be able to give it to her.”

I shrugged. “I’m starting to get used to things not making sense.”

Two, the exact manner in which I’d eased the process of getting used to that.

The door swung open. Danny gaped. “Holy shit. You—you cleaned _everything_ , didn’t you?”

“I tried not to,” I said.

“No, no it’s fine that you did,” Danny said, shaking her head and chuckling again as she took in the room. “Remember Perry?”

“I think so?”

“Yeah. You two would get on great.”

I thought back. Perry, the girl who got all excited about staking vampires and had since had kind of a violent look about her whenever anyone got too close or startled her. “I’m actually a little surprised she doesn’t live here. She seems like she’d fit in really well.”

Danny’s eyes met mine for a split second before she burst out laughing. Three, the reality that even if my memory had grown slightly less patchy, there was a great deal that I still didn’t know.

“So,” she said, sitting down at her desk, “I wanted to tell you something.” She waited until I faced her from the foot of the bed. “I don’t know when the video’s going up, or if Laura’s even going to bother with another one since her project’s over, but…Carmilla’s alive.”

I stared at her. This was sudden.

“The vampire,” she clarified. “The girl with the dark hair and the sarcasm.”

“No, I know who she is,” I said. Sort of—I still wasn’t sure how well. “But how is she alive? We saw her fall.” Or—did we? Somebody did, and they said so, and that was close enough to having seen it.

Danny shook her head. “I honestly don’t know. But she is. I carried her back to Laura’s room less than half an hour ago, we got some blood into her, and it was like she’d never been gone.”

“Laura must be thrilled.” I regretted the flatness of my words at once. This was still sudden.

“She is,” Danny said. “We won. And even Carmilla is alive.” She sounded as confused as I did. “It's amazing, really. I don't think any of us expected her to survive.”

_I should say something_ , I thought. 

“But it's great that she did,” Danny said.

I nodded.

Danny rubbed her forehead, shook her head with a weak smile, and said, “It's great that she's back.” To her credit, she sounded surer this time.

She watched me for a moment. I'd by that point clued in that this wasn't strictly a conversation.

“You okay? You're pretty quiet.”

“Yeah, I'm fine. Just wrapping my head around it,” I said. “I guess, where I come from, people stay dead.”

Danny laughed at this, and it was like time thawed again, like surprisingly impermanent death was something we could actually talk about. “I keep forgetting how strange this must be for you. It's like you just got here.”

“Like I said, I'm getting used to it,” I said. “But you never did say, how did you find—”

“Excuse me.” Claire stood in the doorway.

Danny stiffened slightly at the interruption. “Can I help you?”

“We need to talk.”

Danny’s eyebrows twitched: _oh, do we now?_ But she said instead, “When do you propose?”

“Lunch. An hour from now.” As soon as she had appeared, Claire was gone.

“Somebody’s in trouble,” came a singsong voice from behind the closed door across the hall. “Somebody’s in trouble…”

Danny turned to me. “I apologize for her. She thinks that just because she’s president—”

“Actually,” I said, “she’s been pretty nice to me.”

“Wow.” Danny looked me over. “Wow. You’re really something, then. I hope it lasts. I really, truly hope it works out for you.”

I wasn’t quite sure how to respond to that.

“Well,” she said, “if you’re doing okay, I think I’ll go see what Elsie may or may not have gotten herself into.”

I nodded. “Go ahead. I’m in the middle of a really good book.”

“Cool. Oh, and…even though Carmilla’s back…I think Laura might still want to see you again.”

“I’ll drop by.”

In truth, I’d already been there earlier. Laura was recording another of her videos, and I’d…well, maybe I hadn’t been very nice to her.

I'd tried, though. I’d woken up, decided that today was going to be one of my good days, and headed right over, whereupon this decision proved horribly uninformed. I’d remade the bed and chatted about Princeton and Laura’s classes, hoping that this would do a little to make good on my promise to her. But she was having none of it. And what's more, the day that you decide is going to be normal is not the day to find large amounts of hair and blood in unexpected and increasingly inappropriate places.

Danny looked pleased with my plan, though. Maybe I would still go visit again. “See you at lunch?”

“See you at lunch.”

I went downstairs. Claire was back at work on something, her concentration intense. I glanced at it. It looked like physics, but if it was, the acceleration was something weird, and all of the vector arrows were strangely bendy. I took up what was becoming my usual spot next to her and leaned over to pick up the fat little leather-bound book she’d offered me a few days ago, volume one of the promised journal. She shot me a quick smile, then returned to her papers.

The quiet began to be punctuated by distant bouts of uproarious laughter. Claire's eyes darted at these, and after the fourth one, she got up abruptly. I thought she might be about to go lecture Danny and Elsie, but then the laughter erupted again several more times. Eventually it died down for good, and a few minutes later, I heard someone coming downstairs and a loud voice that called, “Yo, should I be helping or something?”

I didn’t hear the reply, and I went back to the journal. Sometimes, coming across certain passages, I found myself wondering if Claire’s reverence and odd way of speaking of her ancestor had been purely her own idiosyncrasy—some lines made me feel as if the old woman were speaking to me herself, not dead after all but merely irregularly inhabiting her words. Was that possible? Heck, were ghosts a thing here?

Something certainly seemed to be a thing here. Grandma was absolutely meticulous about her journaling, recording the events of every date-labeled day apart from the ones in which she was infected or missing, even down to something she called “being touched by the Goddess,” a roughly cyclical event she alluded to only briefly and regarded with grudging acceptance. Sometimes coinciding with this, but usually not, was a more regular pattern of similarly-spaced missing pages evidenced by untidy scraps left behind. Entries immediately preceding and following those days regularly fell victim to vigorous redactions, uncharacteristic slashes blacking out entire sentences and paragraphs. Claire’s grandmother’s document, once complete, had not fared well in the subsequent decades.

There was something quietly disconcerting about that, and if I thought about it for too long, it somehow reminded me of my visit with Laura that morning. I set the book down and wondered if I, too, should be helping with something. I approached the kitchen doorway, but I hung back then, watching. Claire hovered over a pot of water far from boiling, her focus shifting between this and the close supervision of Elsie slicing vegetables.

“Before dusk, if you could,” Claire said, moving to hover over Elsie instead. Because apparently she needed even closer supervision.

Elsie drew away from her. “Cool your jets, Madam Prez. It’ll get done when it gets done. Don’t let your water get out of hand over there.”

Claire returned to the pot and watched the steam rising in gentle wisps. “You’re such a pain in the ass, you know that?”

“Whatever,” Elsie said, not breaking her rhythm. “If you say so.”

Claire was moving in to hover again. It was abundantly clear to me that I did not belong there, that all necessary help was being provided. I wandered around to see if anyone else was home, but it was just Claire, Elsie, and I. Danny had shut her door and, I assumed, didn't want to be disturbed. I went ahead and read more of the journal, which remained disconcerting, until I heard the sound of ceramic meeting wood in the distance.

 

“Where are the others?”

Danny, looking groggy but obviously stoked to be joining us, faced Claire from the far end of the table. “Beats hell out of me. They’re allowed to be out.”

“Of course they are.” Claire stabbed at a chunk of onion, not breaking her gaze. “I just thought that they should be here for this.”

“Yeah, speaking of,” Danny said, “What exactly _is_ this about? Your royal summons was pretty nonspecific.”

Elsie gave me an apologetic head-shake. I shrugged back. This would be interesting to watch, if nothing else.

“This,” Claire said, “is a discussion of your recent conduct. Your duties as a sister.”

“Which I have fulfilled above and beyond the extent required, as you well know.”

“Only through sheer happenstance. And far later than was necessary.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You were distracted,” Claire said, laying her fork down. “You were distracted by that freshman girl, and it clouded your judgment.”

_Gee,_ I thought,  _doesn't that freshman girl have a name?_

“She was one of the sacrifices,” Danny countered. “Karnstein was her roommate.”

“You didn’t treat her as one of the sacrifices, though,” Claire said. “You didn’t even know she was chosen until Karnstein nearly bit her. You didn’t even unmask _Karnstein_ in a timely manner. If you hadn’t been so busy all this time playing sidekick to Hollis’s foolhardy project—”

“That’s what this is about?” Danny burst out. “You’ve been on my ass for months because I had a thing for Laura?” She threw her hands up. “It’s probably over, okay? Completely, utterly over. So I won’t be _distracted_ anymore. You happy?”

“Of course not!” Claire seized her fork again. “You fucked up, Lawrence, and it made you blind and incompetent. If you had been doing your job properly, I have no doubt that we would have taken down Dean Morgan weeks ago.” Claire ticked off names on her fingers. “Susan LaFontaine—needlessly endangered. Sarah Jane Davies—dead. Natalie Liu—alive but now unreachable, possibly went home without adequate support. Elsie Hess—” She glanced at the girl in question, seated to her right. “Recovered, but after considerable delay.”

“Claire, it’s fine,” Elsie cut in. “It’s not like I missed anything big.”

Claire waved irritably at her. “Elizabeth Spielsdorf—likewise. You had a duty, Lawrence. And you let some silly freshman make you forget it.”

Danny retorted, of course, but I don’t know what she said. I had tuned it out, a little unsettled. I think Claire expected me to appreciate her speaking on my behalf, but being on a list of the missing was weird...and wait, hadn't there been that one guy? The one with the broken arm who'd called Danny his bro (whatever that meant). He'd been held with the rest of us, so why hadn't she mentioned him? I scanned their faces, but Elsie had returned to her food, Claire’s eyes revealed quivered words, and Danny, stony and defiant, looked as if she’d been waiting for this attack for quite some time.

“Explain to me,” Claire was saying now, nearly making my hair stand on end, “why you have so far neglected to inform me that Karnstein is _still alive_?”

Danny hadn’t been waiting for that, apparently. Claire spied the opening, took aim, and fired.

“You recovered the body, watched it come back to life, said nothing to any of us. It blew up online, Lawrence, not long after your return. Everyone's talking about it, even people who've never heard of Silas before, and word only then got back to me. But I should have heard of these events from you, immediately preceding an apology for reviving her and a plan to rectify the error. Better still, you should have checked, days ago, that she was properly _dead_.”

“You’re crazy,” Danny said. “She killed Dean Morgan. That should be more than enough to redeem her in our eyes.”

“Credit where credit is due. She did no such thing. That was the work of Laura Hollis. Who, because of your fuck-up, is now in danger again.”

“How? You think I’d leave Laura in danger after all we’ve been through? There’s no way Carmilla’s going to hurt her.”

“And how can you be so sure? Her instincts run nearly as deep as your own. When she gets used to being free from the influence of Dean Morgan, when Hollis is no longer a fun plaything—”

Incredulity turned to clenched-jaw conviction. “She would never hurt Laura.”

“And what about everyone else? You think she won't want to feed? Won't miss the hunt? Won't get hungry, annoyed, bored?”

Danny paused for a second, and I wondered if she hadn't considered this. “We don't know who she is without Dean Morgan around. She might be—”

“What, all vampires just have bad sires? Kill the sire and they develop a sudden respect for human life?”

“We don't know that—”

“That's the best you can offer? You'd like to stake your life, my life, your sisters' lives on 'we don't know'?” Claire stood, gathered up her dishes. “I know what this is really about. You didn't _think_ about the danger Karnstein still poses. You just figured that you could score a few more points with Hollis.”

“Who didn't pay me the slightest notice, right? What a great job I did.”

“Your mistake.” Claire fixed her with such a disapproving look that it made me almost want to apologize even though I'd had nothing to do with any of it. “If you don't fix it, I will.” And then she was gone, judgment handed down.

We looked at each other in the ensuing silence as if returning to stillness following an aftershock, everything less settled than we'd thought it was.

“Damn,” Elsie said. “She's pretty mad at you.”

Danny rolled her eyes. “Of course she is. It's practically her natural state.”

“Umm...do we really know that Carmilla won't attack anyone?” I said. “Not—not that I think she will. But...how _do_ we know?”

“Well, it's true that we don't absolutely know,” Danny admitted, turning to me. “I wish I did. But...” She sighed and seemed to be dredging up something difficult. “Okay...bear with me...when I was down there in that pit...and I saw her, lying there on the ground as if she were asleep, I knew, on some level, that she'd probably spent centuries doing horrible things, who knows what, possibly without remorse. I knew all that. I knew that she'd ranged from sarcastic pain in the ass to unscrupulous rival to suspected kidnapper and serial killer just in the time that we’d known each other.”

She paused, looking at Elsie and I in appeal. I waited. Was this supposed to be reassuring?

“But that’s not what I saw when I was down there. When I looked at her, still and almost peaceful, she wasn't a three-hundred-year-old vampire that it was my duty to kill to keep everyone safe. She was just an eighteen-year-old girl, lifeless in my arms, and…” She gestured vaguely, searching for elusive words, then shook her head. “It's different when they fight back. I couldn’t leave her there—not if there was a chance she was alive.”

I didn't really know what to think. I looked to Elsie, but Elsie seemed to be preoccupied with chewing for an unusually long time, failing to rescue me from the silence. What was I supposed to say? Claire had been blunt, but she'd had a point about trusting Carmilla, one that I definitely hadn't thought of, whether Danny had or not. I wasn't entirely convinced either way, but how could I say, “I wish you'd left her for dead?” I wasn't sure that I did—maybe things were different at Silas, but that didn't seem right either.

It reminded me of coming back to myself, the parasite gone, and having to confront a past I didn't remember, except that this past was Carmilla's, and I was even less responsible for it.

“Hey, it's cool. I get it.” Oh, thank god. “I wouldn't have done it either,” Elsie said. “Is it gonna come back to figuratively bite you? Maybe. But in the meantime, I guess all you can do is keep an eye on her.”

“Yeah. I guess so. I hope it's enough.”

“So,” Elsie said, “everybody's been asking about you.”  
“No way,” Danny said. “Aren't they busy celebrating your return?”

Elsie glanced at me—quickly, but not quickly enough to escape my notice. “Not yet. I mean, Ari's talking about a party, but there was all of the death—except, it turns out, apparently not—and you haven't been home since shit went down at the Lustig, so...no.” She leaned forward. “Come on. It's not over until our VP comes home.”

Danny smiled at this. “It's over, then. Where is Ari anyway? I wanna see if she and that Zeta guy are healing up okay.”

“I think I'm going to go get some fresh air,” I said, getting up.

They turned to me. “Do you want someone to come with you?” Danny asked.

“Nope, I think I've got this.”

The overcast sky met me just outside, a cold mirror held up to my cloudy mind. I took another few steps forward as if they were something fresh and new, as much into the world as away from the house, checked: I could still remember everything from that morning on in fairly rich detail, and almost everything from the previous few days.

This excited me just a little, a minor thrill leaping up into my mind. Not just because I hadn't lost any more time, but because I'd actually forgotten to review it yet today and it was still all there, even though I'd left the house alone earlier. My memory seemed to be holding.


	4. Chapter 4

Standing outside the Summer Society house, I watched an unnervingly large squirrel try and fail to scale the tree in front of me. “Okay,” I said under my breath. “Outside, recent memory intact, a bit chilly, still not sure what happened between the tour and last Friday. I should do something. I should make a plan. I should figure out who I am here. Who would know me?”

My parents. Except...maybe not. I took out my phone: they hadn't called since the day of the tour, which was odd. What had I said when they'd called? I didn't remember. Why hadn't they called again?

More importantly, what on earth would I tell them? I'd made no headway on that question, really, and asking them to relate the last however-many months wouldn't go over well. There had to be somewhere else to start.

“Hey…are you lost?”

I jumped. “What?” This tall girl with the thick-rimmed glasses and the brunette curls that wanted to eat her head seemed to know something of me already, although I hadn't seen her before. She regarded me with a quiet concern.

“Are you okay?”

Here we go again. I knew this routine, and it was getting slightly tiresome by now. The sooner I assured her of my stability, the sooner she’d be on her way and let me be on mine. “Yeah, I’m fine. It's just been a long semester.”

“Chris Winters,” she said, offering her hand. “You sure I can't help you with something?”

“Betty Spielsdorf,” I said, clasping it perfunctorily. Of the missing. You might have heard of me.

She stared at me, and I saw the fog clearing. “Wait…Betty Spielsdorf…Spielsdorf—ohhh, right, I'm so sorry!” She laughed. “It really has been a long semester, hasn't it? I haven't seen you in forever!”

“What are you apologizing for?”

“Oh, gosh.” More laughter. “I just didn't recognize you for a second. This is a new prescription, and everyone looks a little strange—probably because I can actually see their faces now.” She seized me by the shoulders. “I'm so glad you're back safe!”

“I'm...really glad to be back,” I said. There was something strange about her. “I actually was on my way to—“

“Oh, of course! I don't mean to keep you—have a great rest of your day!” She let go and practically fled into the house. Maybe, I thought, I should've asked her if _she_ was doing okay—my unexpected presence seemed to have rattled her.

Right, so, back to the task of figuring out who I was for the last few months. I turned back to my phone. Parents were out, as were most of the people that I knew prior to Silas. I could do worse than to call some of these other people in my contacts, I decided. Maybe they were familiar with this sort of thing.

 

“Hello?” Contact number one answered with a feminine-sounding voice that immediately made me think I'd said something offensive. A great sign.

“Hello? This is Betty Spielsdorf?”

“Oh my god, it's been forever. How've you been?” She still sounded put-upon. Apparently I hadn't been close with this Teresa girl.

“Well...” Well, I was hoping you'd tell me that. “Okay, I guess. It seems like the semester has really flown by.” So fast that it feels like it never even happened, truth be told.

A long silence. “Really? Another fucking bird joke? You ornithophobic jackass.” She hung up.

This was going to be harder than I had expected.

 

I turned up another person fairly quickly, though. I didn't have a name for her, but she and I appeared in a lot of strangely-posed photos that I found on my phone, so it didn't seem like I had harbored secret anti-avian sentiments toward her or anything (I still wasn't sure what had happened earlier, and something told me that Teresa wouldn't be willing to explain). And, as luck would have it, she was in the quad, in plain sight, with several other people who I recognized. I approached, optimistic.

“Hey guys.”

They all turned to look. The telltale delay, then, “Oh, hey.”

As they turned back to my possible friend, who was in the middle of animatedly telling a story about a disastrous exam involving the dissection a previously demon-possessed pig, the specifics of which I'm  _sure_ I'm misremembering and I will not share, I considered my next move. If I could get one of them alone, that would help, but I wasn't about to attempt to isolate anyone after my and Silas's recent experiences with undead evil. Miss Duckface was already shooting me apprehensive looks I didn't think I'd earned.

“Are you lost?” someone asked. I shook my head and tried an assured smile— _no, I know exactly where I am._ He seemed to accept this, but I saw no recognition in his eyes. Cross him off the list of people who knew me. That no one else found the question odd wasn't encouraging either.

When at last someone broke away from the group, I hurried after her. “Hey,” I said more urgently than I intended, phone in hand. “Do you remember this?”

She stopped; her eyes scanned the photo I'd offered her. Once, twice, a third time. “Yeah,” she said, smiling and nodding. “This was that thing two weeks ago, right?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I'd forgotten and was just trying to remember. Thanks.” But as I turned away, my heart sank a little. I had still been captive underground two weeks ago.

 

I wandered at length, my steps taking me to destinations that I wondered if maybe I remembered from the months I’d been at Silas. Lots of time in the quad, just going in circles and random figures that made me look drunker than I had the pleasure of being. Lots of trips to the library. Lots of dodging people who looked at me as if I were a loose end come suddenly and unnervingly untied in their minds.

Nobody knew. Easily half of the people who I identified as likely to have known something of my whereabouts did their best not to let on that they had no idea who I was. The other half, while aware of my recent rescue from nearly being sacrificed, were either too fascinated by these events to talk about anything else or had nothing else to talk about. To their credit, the latter group recognized the significance of my questions and seemed to want to help, but when their stories weren't contradictory, they were too fantastic to be possible.

 

I finally came to a stop, almost against my will. I was covering plenty of ground but getting nowhere with this approach. I looked down at my phone again with a growing sense of embarrassment. All of that fruitless walking even after I gave up on gleaning anything useful from my fellow students, as if I were stalling, avoiding the obvious but unappealing solution: calling home. Which, to be honest, I was.

I still didn't know what to say. There had been absolutely nothing in Claire's grandmother's journals about this—she'd mentioned a few letters she'd written to her family but never specified their contents. I wouldn't have the luxury of that degree of remove, of having whole paragraphs and pages to explain myself uninterrupted. Knowing my mother, she'd be on me in an instant, which made it crucial to start off the right way. Except I wouldn't know the right way until I'd either stumbled on it or not.

I closed my eyes, willing my nervousness to ease, and dialed.

When I heard her voice on the other end, my heart skipped a beat, and I realized that I was holding my breath. “Mom?” I squeaked.

“Elizabeth?” Cool, restrained, yet unmistakably alert.

I opened my mouth, but my breath caught again. I had been so wrapped up in what to say for the last week, I'd assumed I'd be able to say whatever it was. But—I _knew_ that voice. I had known that voice for eighteen years. Every time I'd considered calling, I'd imagined it responding so many ways—alarm, fear, reproach, relief, even (improbably) mirth. It was more real than any of that. I was at a loss for words, even the wrong ones.

“Mom,” I said again. “Mom.” God, I was so happy I might explode, or at least cry. I clenched my empty fist, scuffed at the ground with one toe, resisted the urge to jump into the air.

“Elizabeth?” A wary note. “What's going on?”

“Mom, it's been ages since we talked. I...” Tell the truth? Maybe, maybe part of it. “I've been ridiculously busy this semester. I wish I hadn't gone so long without calling.” 

“I wish you hadn't, too.”

Silence. I waited. So did she. One of those huge squirrels fell out of the tree a few feet in front of me. The silence went on. The squirrel righted itself and started its climb back up. Mom didn't speak.

This was unlike her. My initial euphoria was beginning to wear off, with creeping unease filling the void.

“Mom? Did—did something happen?”

“Which time?” Cool turned to cold.

“What do you—”

“I've been trying to reach you since September.”

Oh no. Oh no, no, no.

“I—I'm so sorry. I didn't get any calls from you.” I had checked, hadn't I? There hadn't been anything in my phone's log...I'd have to check it again.

“The hell you didn't.” The words bit. “I called. Your dad called. August called.”  
“August—” I was seized with longing. “Are Dad and August there? Can I talk to them?”

The answer came fast: “No. August is at school, and Dad is at work.”

“But Dad doesn't work on—”

“He does now.”

“Mom, I'm so sorry. I—”

“Great-Aunt Marie died asking for you.”

I groped behind me for the bench I thought was there, failed to find it, and made my way unsteadily across the quad as the squirrel plummeted from its branch again. I lowered myself down at a picnic table into which were etched the words “actus me invito factus non est meus actus” and “ZOM 4 LYFE.” I felt drained, Marie's face floating before my eyes.

“I didn't know,” I said.

“We moved. Dad changed jobs. August got a perfect GPA last trimester and he was _so damn proud—_ he wanted to tell you about it. But apparently you couldn't tear yourself away from your studies long enough to answer the phone.”

“I didn't—”

“When we never heard from you, we thought something might have happened, so I called Silas, and they told me that you were here and attending classes, that everything was fine. So then we knew that you were just ignoring us.”

“Mom, I can explain—I was—”

“You were busy.”

“No, I—”

“Save it. Your dad and I thought that Silas would be good for you, that maybe you'd be able to relax a little and make time for your _goddamn family again._ We were wrong.” I heard the break before she disconnected.

I laid my phone down. “ZOM 4 LYFE” burned itself into my swimming eyes. I laid my head in my hands as if I could keep the guilt from bursting out just the way joy had only recently threatened to. I couldn't believe I had been so _stupid_. I'd been so worried about what I had done over the last few months that I had somehow forgotten that everyone else had lived through those months too, without me.

 

I bounced back fast, back to the question of proof and memory—because I had to. The sisters were obviously no use. Claire’s grandmother’s journals were merely someone else’s record of her pre- and post-amnesia life, a much-appreciated companion during my first days of recovery but at times disappointingly unspecific. I had no such record of my own. Family was out, really out. Whatever memory anyone else had of me was vague, unreliable, fleeting. Nothing solid, nothing permanent...

Administration. Usually eureka moments and similar revelations make people run, either towards or away from the site of the fresh discovery, but I approached that huge stone building with the apprehension born of the knowledge that this might be my last shot at knowing what had happened. My manner was probably in keeping with whatever weird history the place had anyway.

Inside, the digital age appeared to have barely forced entry. Or, for that matter, the electric age. And once they'd arrived, they'd had a difficult time settling in properly. There were a bunch of those promotional “look at how great college life is!” photos stuck up on a bulletin board at random angles, all glossy and perfect and illuminated by torchlight. A poster read ‘Town Hall Preparedness.” Below its instructions, a little glass box covered a blinking blue button. The air hummed just slightly quieter than a power substation. How had I not noticed any of this on the tour? Or was it some sort of possession victim special where you only got to see the real Silas once you’d been screwed over?

The registrar’s office was, a sign informed me, down two flights of stairs. So I trekked down to where its heavy door barred my way, where I saw another sign that told me, “Provide the password for access.”

There I was, in a strange basement of a school where I had almost died and definitely forgotten several months of my life, with nobody knowing where I was or very much of who I was. Well, I thought, remembering my fragmented first full day as myself again, at least I was conscious of this moment and knew how I’d gotten here. Even if I was standing there pitying myself and making little headway getting out so far, I had that much awareness and seemed to be hanging onto it. A cool head could be a useful thing to have.

“What the fuck is the password?” I whispered.

The door swung open, and I walked in, surprised that this had worked, and of course it slammed shut behind me. The man at the desk looked up, and before I could figure out what exactly I wanted to know from him, he said simply, “Name?”

“Betty—Elizabeth Spielsdorf.”

Clatter, clatter. He frowned at his screen. “Spell it.”

I did so.

“I have no record of any such person.”

“Oh hell no.”

He looked back up. “I’m sorry?”

“No, no, I’m sorry. Are you sure there’s nothing?”

“Let me try again,” he said, and then he was lost to me in a flow of mutters: “no…not in there…maybe…offer it to the…not in _there_ …god, that's a bad translation…I hope it doesn't...”

He didn’t make sense, but he sounded moderately competent. I stared at the huge empty picture frame, the empty fish tank, the wholly improbable window that looked out onto a sunlit grassy field through which puppies gamboled.

“Okay, I have you here now,” he said. “It looks like you transferred a couple of months ago. Strangely, if I go a little further, it says that you transferred _to_ Silas, but that you then neglected to attend any classes and are now in an ambiguous, ungraded state between passing and failing.” He raised his eyebrows. “Impressive.”

What on earth did that mean? Among other concerns, had Silas lied to Mom when she'd asked about me?

“So, am I here now?”

He regarded me evenly. “What do you think?”

“Seriously,” I said, gritting my teeth. “I need to know.”

“The evidence points to yes,” he said. “What you’re doing here is less clear.”

“What about my application?” I asked. “Is that on file somewhere?” I didn't remember filling it out, so maybe it would reveal something.

He glanced over his shoulder at the puppies, of all things. “I’m really not supposed to have anything to do with Admissions. But…you seem like you’re in a tough spot. If I don’t stare directly at the...uh...at...maybe we can find your app.”

I’d never heard deeply apologetic Latin chanting before. The fluorescent lights overhead flickered a few times, and when they steadied again, the electric buzzing actually stopped. I watched the puppies in the field, but nothing happened to them. I wasn’t sure what I’d been expecting.

“There’s nothing in there,” he said as the buzzing resumed. At my expression, crestfallen bordering on indignant, he added, “That's normal—there usually isn't.”

“Why not? Didn’t I submit one?”

“Well, yeah, but that’s not why you would’ve been accepted. You probably sent in your transcripts and recommendations, and wrote an essay, and took whichever tests you wanted, but that's all just a formality. Silas doesn’t take it into account, so we usually don’t keep it after admission, barring special circumstances. Saves space, you know.”

“What does it take into account, then?”

“Oh, no,” he said. “No. I’m sorry, Miss Spielsdorf, but I can’t go into that. I’m already playing with fire and worse things trying to find the app when it's likely not supposed to be there. Revealing the details of the admissions process is something I can’t do.”

I thanked him and made to leave, but that heavy gray door wouldn’t budge. I’d probably screwed up the password on the way in, and now the office had decided to keep me. I was aware that I should have been far more disturbed by this thought than I was. Maybe I was getting used to Silas again. Maybe I’d given up on sense.

He must’ve seen me struggling, because he called out, “Duly noted,” and I found that the door yielded as easily as any. I shot him a final grateful glance, then fled.

Outside was better than inside, but I was so confused at that point that I wouldn’t have been surprised if something freakish had started growing out of the ground too. But right now, somehow, the only freakish thing in the area was me. And I was pretty much out of ideas.


	5. Chapter 5

When I got sick of playing ghost some more, staggering around in a daze and retracing the same footsteps and fruitless thoughts like my own unending, self-guided tour of Silas, I went back to Crowley Hall. I didn't have any great reason to be there, but I had to be somewhere, and maybe coming back there would shake loose something I'd forgotten. Maybe I’d meet Carmilla (and gauge her threat level?) and try not to piss off Laura quite as much as I had before.

Laura answered the door, and I saw it at once in her eyes: Betty the loose end.

“Hey,” I said, forcing good cheer past the realization. “Heard the big news. Congratulations!”

“Thanks,” she said, stepping back to let me enter. “I really thought she was gone for a while.”

“We all did. And…” What to say? What to say? “…she’s not!” Not that.

“You could say that,” came a voice from the bed with the leopard-print sheets on it again. As Laura sat down reluctantly on her own, Carmilla got up to assess me. “So you were the missing roommate.”

“I was.”

“And I was the dead one. Still am, in a way. Carmilla.” She offered me her hand, cool to the touch. “Welcome back.”

“Betty. You too.” She seemed safe enough for now—while Laura looked on.

“So, I know that Laura and I figured that once she found you, I’d be on my—”

“Betty, I’m sorry, but—”

Of course. “I’m not coming back,” I said. “You don’t have to tell me. I already know I’m not moving back in.”

I really think Laura tried to hide her delight at this acknowledgment, out of politeness, but if so, she did a terrible job of it. Carmilla was watching her now with gentle amusement, and Laura turned and absolutely beamed at her. Girlfriends. Gotcha.

“How are you doing?” she asked me, still trying. I wished I could thank her for it, or at least let her know that she didn’t have to.

“I’m okay,” I said. “Transfer plans have a few snags for now, but they’ll work out somehow.”

“You’re still going to Princeton?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I want to, but I’ve still been trying to figure out how to get out, and even that process is making me wonder if I might have to go somewhere else.”

“That’d be too bad.”

“I guess, yeah.” Best not to complain too vigorously in the presence of the newly revived. “Lately if I can remember where I am and how I got there, and everything’s alive that should be and dead that should be, it’s a good day. I’m definitely leaving, though. Silas didn’t exactly make a good impression these last few months, and I think that tour probably goes down in history as…”

Yeah, no. They weren’t listening. Carmilla was staring at Laura’s lips, and Laura was staring at Carmilla’s, and—enough already.

“I’ll be in touch,” I said. “Whatever happens.”

“Yeah,” Laura said. “Me too. Good luck. I hope everything works out for you.”

So much for my promise to be the friend she’d tried so hard to save—apparently she was the multitasking kind of savior. And this last promise we’d made? Empty. I knew I wouldn’t hear from her, and if I bothered contacting her, we’d soon have nothing to say to each other. No point in dragging it out—better to just let her go.

Which left me standing in the hallway, wondering half-seriously if some evil part of my still-recovering brain had decided that this, this was the day to systematically dismantle whatever aspects of my life remained relatively intact. Because if it was an accident, it was a damn impressive one.

While I’d been wandering earlier, the sun had set, and my enduring self-preservation instincts precluded wandering again at night. There wasn’t really anywhere to go. Crowley Hall would have to do for the time being. So I sat outside Laura and Carmilla’s door like the fully together person I was, and stared at the wall across from me, and tried to think of something to do with myself.

The one ginger girl, LaFontaine, exited a room just down the hall, passed me with a flash drive clenched in her hand and unspoken words clenched in her teeth and went out into the night with none of my hesitation. The violent ginger that they called Perry pursued her and seemed to be gaining ground, but despite her apparent ferocity, the sight of the darkness seemed to stop her in her tracks. At which point, she turned and saw me looking all pathetic and abandoned.

“Betty? Are you okay?”

From the top again. “I’m great,” I said. “Just collecting my thoughts.”

“Oh.” Perry wavered. You’d think I’d have gotten more convincing with the amount of practice I’d had reassuring everyone lately. Maybe not.

“Are _you_ okay?” I ventured, half out of exasperation and a desire to shake things up a bit.

It worked. Perry stared at me as if the question were foreign to her. “Yes,” she said abruptly. “I was just going to make some hot cocoa. Do you want some?”

I considered this. The degree of concern I heard—very slight—was acceptable. And it was something to do, even something nice to do. I could use the company.

“Sure.”

I followed her to her room, which was mind-bogglingly perfect. Not the kind of tidiness that gets thrown together because you think you really ought to keep some kind of order or because you’re expecting guests. The kind of precise, strong order that says, “I know everything that comes in and out of here, and it does so with my permission.” I wanted it, and I wanted to be the kind of person permitted into it. For now, I’d apparently passed her test.

On one of the beds lay a long, thick afghan in an array of shades of blue, shading smoothly from pale dawn to navy night. Once I’d recovered from my organizational envy, it caught my eye. “This is really pretty.”

She set the cups on the counter and turned. “Oh, that,” she said, an ominous bitterness tingeing her voice. “I’m going to have to do something with that.”

“Why?” I asked. “It’s gorgeous.”

She came over, then, and sat down on the bed, regarding the afghan with displeasure. “I made that while she was gone.”

“So?” I said. “And now she’s back. I’m sure she likes it.”

“No,” she said sharply. “She’s not. And she doesn’t. And I can’t have this—this—” Her fingers stroked the stitches, snatched at them, seized a bunch of fabric. “I can’t stand to be reminded. It needs to be unraveled. It’s for the best.”

“How long did it take, though?” I asked as I joined her, a little in awe.

“Oh, not that long,” she said. But I knew that line well, from high school projects and the false modesty that they demanded, and remembered that it meant “more hours than I cared to count.”

“Well, she might still come back,” I said, not entirely sure why she hadn’t yet. LaFontaine certainly seemed to be back, in all the ways that mattered. More so than I was, anyway. “So maybe you could wait before you do anything drastic.”

“She’s not going to,” Perry said. “She’s found someone else. She doesn’t—I’m sorry, you didn’t come to hear about this.” She got up and busied herself with the water.

“I don’t know what I came for,” I said. “And if it does you some good…”

She looked at me, evaluating the offer, and I realized that I knew that look. I’d probably worn it only a few minutes ago.

“You think you know somebody,” she said, turning her back to me, “and you think you know what’s going to happen. You make plans. And then something else happens.”

“Tell me about it,” I said. “That’s been my last week, to the letter.”

“Maybe you do things,” she went on, “that don’t make any sense except for being part of the plan. And then when the plan doesn’t work…when you look at it and you wonder how stupid you must’ve been to ever _think_ it could work…”

“I’m sure it wasn’t stupid,” I said. “Sometimes crazy shit happens.”

Her laughter mingled with the clatter of the spoons. “It’s not even crazy, though, looking back. Of _course_ she wanted to—it’s a completely normal thing to want, to have—it’s just—” She leaned forward onto hands gripping the counter, searching the sink for answers. “—what do I do now?”

“I don’t know,” I said, absently stroking the afghan, which proved nicer but no more enlightening than the sink. “I don’t know what I’m doing either. But I think, maybe, that people get to make more than one plan. That it’s not all over after the first one.”

“What do I do now?” she whispered, just loud enough for me to hear.

I remembered this state, and I changed tacks accordingly. I stood, crossed the room to her, led her gently to the table. “You wait, and I finish making the cocoa. Okay?”

She nodded. As I made myself look busy, I glanced back at her and saw that stillness was far from her natural state. She kept eyeing the afghan, then me, then the afghan, and I could tell that she was trying to decide what to interfere with first.

“So,” I said, hoping to delay the decision, “what makes you so sure she’s not coming back?”

Success: her gaze settled on me. “She has him now.”

“So?”

“She’s never been like this about anybody before him. She wouldn’t be sneaking off to the _library_ , at _night_ , to be with anybody else.”

“Where are the mugs?”

“Left-hand side, on top. Ignore the beakers. I keep telling her they’re not appropriate, but—” She threw up her hands. “It doesn’t matter now.”

“You want anything else in this?”  
She smiled at this. “I shouldn’t.”

“Screw that,” I said, nearly surprising myself with my own audacity (could she report me for the suggestion?). “Do you want something?”

“No,” she said. “It’s fine as it is.”

I brought the mugs over to her and sat down. “I’m sure you’ll work something out with her.”

“No,” she said. “I can’t. She’s hardly here now. And she won’t even let me _talk_ to him. I thought, at first, that we could just all sit down and have a peaceful conversation about our boundaries, but she’s resisted my every attempt at discussing it.”

We, too, had reached an impasse. I took a sip of cocoa, felt it burn my lip and the rest of the way down.

“Thank you,” she said.

“No problem.”

“I’m usually a much better host. I really should have—”

“No, you’ve been fine.”

“But really, I should have—”

“You know, I’ve thought about taking up knitting,” I said suddenly. “How hard is it to learn?”

“Not too hard,” she said. “Like anything else, it mainly just takes time.” She brightened. “Would you like me to teach you a little bit?”

I nodded. I’d told the truth, after all, and it’d give her something to do, which she seemed to desperately need. “While the cocoa cools.”

She jumped up, went over to the closet, and opened it to reveal a color-sorted abundance of yarn. “What do you want?”

I considered, then said, “That maroon one near the top, I think.”

She smiled at it. “I’ve been meaning to use that for—” The smile fell.

“If you have plans for it, I could—”

“No. I don’t. Not anymore. It’ll do.” She returned to the table with the yarn: sausage-like and soft but unexpectedly spiky with the metal antennae of a pair of knitting needles she’d stuck into it without my noticing. She sat beside me, extracted the needles, and began. “Right. So, casting on. You’re going to make a loop right here, and it goes on the needle in your left hand, and then with your right…”

As she demonstrated, I watched her face nearly as closely as her hands. She paid no such attention to me. Her gaze focused intently on her work, but it looked softer, tranquil. When she turned the needles over to me, it was with a light touch, a simple gratitude she didn’t need to accompany with words. My fingers struggling to imitate her precise, even stitches, I couldn’t begin to match that grace.

“Thank you,” I said as the needles clacked discordantly. “After everything that’s happened, it’s nice to…”

“To get away from it,” she said. “To get away from the weirdness.”

“Right. Exactly.” A thought struck me. “How do you do it? I mean, why are you here, at Silas?” It was increasingly apparent to me that the stake thing had been a fluke. She didn’t seem like the sort to be drawn to a place like this. Indeed, the whole room and her being seemed fortified against its eventual invasion.

She put her hand on my shoulder, and I looked up.

“Because I had a plan.”

God, everything came down to that, didn’t it? Not that I could blame her—I was the same way—but still, it was frustrating to hear from someone else.

“Why don’t you leave, then?”

She took a long sip of cocoa before answering. “Because that’s all I had.”

“That can’t be—”

She set the mug down with a dull thud. “She was my Princeton, Betty. It’s stupid, I know, but she was my Princeton.”

We stared at each other, and I don’t know what she was thinking, but I was thinking that a girl you’d be willing to take that many SAT prep courses for was one who had damn well better acknowledge you. Also that I didn't remember mentioning Princeton to her. A faint echo from that first chaotic night: _“I remember you.”_

“Did she know?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. “In the end, it doesn’t matter.” She got up, and I followed her gaze to a glint of silver on the counter. “Do you have somewhere to stay?”

“I…I haven’t figured that out yet.”

“You do now, if you’d like,” she said. “She’s forgotten her keys again. She’s not coming home tonight.”

I wasn’t sure whether to be touched or slightly chilled by the gesture. I sipped my cocoa. I was probably at best Boston University to LaFontaine’s Princeton, I decided, if not merely one of those silly California schools, so Perry would have little trouble letting me go in the morning.

“I’d be okay with that,” I said.

“Okay,” she said, suddenly hesitant. Had I betrayed my doubts? “Unless you plan on staying up late.” Apparently not.

“I don’t,” I assured her. Though my nights had been restless and mercifully dreamless, busy days had seemed to hasten their coming. Or, I reminded myself, it was winter now, and the nights always came so soon this time of year. That was probably it.

Her phone rang, harsh, old-fashioned rings.

Perry answered, and I saw her eyes flit to me. “Yes, I _have_ seen her,” she said. “She’s with me right now.”

I wondered which one it was: Claire, firing a volley of questions about exactly where I’d been since I’d left the house, or Elsie, making light of having to track me down, or Chris, apologetic for having disturbed Perry over nothing, or Danny, trying too hard not to openly wonder at my being in Crowley for the night.

“Yes, she’s perfectly fine.” Perry sounded irritated, perhaps on my behalf, which I appreciated somehow. “Sure, why not?” She turned to me. “Betty, she wants to talk to you _directly_.”

I took the phone and heard Claire asking abruptly, “Is something wrong?”

“No, everything’s fine. I…” How to explain where I’d been, and why?

“We couldn’t find you.”

“I’m sorry?” Screw that—I wasn’t going to explain. I found that I didn’t really want to. I dug in my pocket for my phone. Stubborn blackness met me on its screen. When had it died?

“We were about to organize a search.”

What was I supposed to say to that, “I’m glad you didn’t”?

Before I could make up my mind, Danny’s voice came on the line: “God, I apologize for her. Although…you could’ve told us you weren't coming back tonight. Are you safe now? Do you know where and who you are?”

I rolled my eyes. “Yes, I’m completely safe. Unless Perry impales me with her knitting, I think I’ll be fine.”

Perry smiled at this as Danny said, “Well, we just wanted to be sure. You’re welcome to come back if you want.”

“I’ll think about it,” I lied. “Thanks.”

“No problem. Oh, one last thing.” Danny's voice dropped to a whisper. “Do you know who left the fruit basket?”

“The...I'm sorry, the what?”  
“The fruit basket.” The whisper grew fierce. “The fruit basket that _somebody_ left outside my door today.”

“Did they leave a note with it?”

“Yeah, they did. It said, ' _Hey sister, the camera doesn’t lie. It’s official: they’re together! Take your aim!'_ No name.”

“That...seems odd. I don't know anything about it.”

“No, I guess not. Well, have a good night, then.”

I handed Perry’s phone back to her. “They mean well,” she said, plugging it back in to charge.

“I’m sure they do.” I stopped myself: I should probably be nicer, even if the slow burn of peevishness was a welcome, sustaining one lately.

She took her seat beside me again. “So, why Princeton?”

“I guess I’ve just always wanted to go,” I said. “Even before I had any idea what I’d study, that was the place I’d study it. You get this image of a place, see yourself there, think about it as kind of an unconscious, taken-for-granted thing even if you haven’t made up your mind for sure. Whenever I thought about college, I thought of there. Then I started getting into politics, and I started the college search properly and did all the research, but honestly? I knew that no matter how the numbers came out, it was going to be Princeton. Silas?” I sipped my cocoa and laughed in lingering disbelief. “Silas was my parents’ really terrible, forced attempt to get me to think about alternatives, just in case. I don’t think they actually thought it would work, but apparently it did.”

My own laughter seemed to echo in my ears, suddenly harsher than I'd meant it. If I was going to keep it together, perhaps it was better to not mention my parents.

“It’s kind of a shame you’re leaving. You and Professor Weber might have really gotten along well. Or…” She paused in thought. “That or you’d have particularly disliked him. I can’t say.”

I shook my head. “Princeton is my Princeton. Even if I can’t get in, I’m always going to want it. And I have to try.”

“You’re handling things so well.”

“Mmm. You haven’t seen much of my handling it. I can’t imagine being here for years and having to deal with everything going wrong.”

“Which is why it’s so admirable,” she said. “Really. You were thrown into this without warning. I’ve had years to get used to the idea that this time would come, and I didn’t.”

“You’re more than her,” I said, aware of how useless it would be. “And more than this madhouse.”

“I know,” she said. “I know, somehow. But everything reminds me. Everything except you, and right now.”

“Funny you should say that. I’ve been spending all this time trying to remember who I am, and all I kept coming up with was that I was someone who forgot, this accident that everybody’s trying to fix or trying to ignore. Even me. But talking to you, it’s almost like I’m…normal again.” Funny we should say any of it. I squirmed a little, shot my mug an entirely unwarranted suspicious glance. Who said that kind of thing out loud, even if it _was_ true?

She smiled at me, tentative but genuine. “To normal,” she said, raising her mug.

“To normal,” I echoed.

Having voiced this commitment to the ordinary, we drank in silence, glancing at one another from time to time as if to check that we were both still there, still as we had been. Later, in the dark, falling asleep in LaFontaine’s bed under the afghan I’d saved from destruction, I felt safer somehow knowing that Perry was there than I had been with at least two heavily-armed warrior women slumbering down the hall. Fragile, but safe.

 

I awakened to being firmly shaken.

“Betty…I don’t know what time you get up in the morning…but it’s six…”

I peeled away sleep. “Six is fine.”

“Good, good…do you want breakfast?”

I smiled at the question. “I thought breakfast wasn’t optional.”

“Never mind that,” she said, sounding distant—and only partly because she was already on her way back to the kitchen. “Do you want it?”

“Sure,” I said, sitting up in bed. “That’d be nice. Thanks.”

Whereupon she was immediately by my side with a waffle, all floral apron and determined winter sunshine.

I blinked at it, and at her. “Could I make it to the table first, do you suppose?”

“Oh. Right. Sorry.” For a moment I regretted being so short with her. But then she was back, sans waffle, asking, “Did you sleep well?”

“Just—” I waved her away, trying to look happy. “Go sit down and I’ll be right there.”

She nodded apologetically and left me alone. I saw her take her seat, stare at her own breakfast as if it had offended her, fidget on the spot.

“Is there any coffee?” I said. She looked almost scarily delighted by the question, wide-eyed and rising to her feet, and I decided then that LaFontaine must be the coffee-drinker, because caffeinated Perry would have surely made and unmade the universe several times over before she even started on breakfast.

“So how was your night?” she asked, pouring water. Apparently she had a thing about sleep. Space was not enough—time, too, was hers to monitor and order.

“Good,” I said. Wonderful, really, but I’d barely met her, and there was a certain distance one observed with near-strangers even if all of them were confirmed human. “Yours?”

“Unusually restful,” she said, watching the gurgling coffeepot. She turned to me suddenly. “Can these explode?”

Her worry looked so comical, but she seemed completely serious. “They usually don’t,” I said. “Not in my experience.”

“She may have done something to it,” Perry said, scrutinizing it again. “I can’t make any guarantees about what’ll come out.”

“Looks fine to me,” I commented as the dark stream trickled forth. “I’m not finicky. And you’ve already done so much.”

She shot me a brief, disbelieving smile and looked in the sink for dishes that weren’t there yet. “What are your plans for today?”

“I don’t know. Find my way out of academic limbo, figure out why my parents never called…” Missing girl stuff. “What are you doing?”

Mugs in hand, she recited: “I have a dorm meeting to plan, some email to send about procedures for leaving for the holidays, I have to stop by the lab and check that—” That LaFontaine hasn’t blown something else up, I assumed from the way that her voice turned on her and she seemed to want to strike the words out, or snatch them back from the air somehow.“By the way, if you're planning to leave, you should come to this meeting—at least this one.”

That was right—I had missed most of the others, hadn't I? She'd mentioned that before—she'd noticed...

_Coffee_ , the inspiration of more than one accidental yet heartfelt prayer. My brain-infected self hadn’t kept up my habit, I realized, and the familiar black magic coursed through my veins. Which was for the best, since it looked like we both had crazy days ahead of us.

We ate without speaking, cocooned in rich smells and tenacious domesticity. When I laid my fork down, Perry was on her feet at once, but I rose to meet her.

“Let me get them,” I said, ready for her objection, my sights set on the sink. “It’s the least I can do.”

She sighed quietly as if this were a great sacrifice, but she yielded and sat back down to watch me with the faintest hint of a smile.

“It’s been nice having you here,” she said.

I nodded, channeling my sudden uneasiness into scrubbing. “Thanks for offering me somewhere to stay.”

That wasn’t enough. She wouldn’t say so, but we knew it.

“Maybe we could do this again sometime,” I said. “It’ll be a while before I find a way to get out of here, if I even can, so there’s probably time.”

“Yes,” she said. After a while, she added, bolder, “Either way, we should keep in touch.”

“We will,” I said. And as I set the dishes on the drying rack, it warmed me, because I knew it was true. We were the kind of people who said that sort of thing and wanted, more than almost anything, to mean it, and we got confused when no one else did. We made plans, and we kept them.

Her phone rang, then, and she answered it with a cheeriness I’d need at least another cup in order to even approach. There was a lot of “I understand,” and “I’ll be right there,” and “No, please trust me, it’s really better not on fire.” I couldn’t imagine saying that to someone and expecting it to work, but she said it as if it were entirely unremarkable.

She hung up. “I don’t want to rush you, but one of my residents is having boy problems and needs me.”

I nodded. “That’s okay. I’d better be going anyway.”

Her eyes held me in place, and I let myself be restrained. When the bonds broke, she went away for a second and approached me with the mess of yarn I’d attempted to do something with the night before.

“Take this with you,” she said, pressing it into my hands. “To remember.”

I accepted it, thinking she was terribly sentimental, but it would turn out that she was also right.

“Thanks,” I said, as she seized me in a brief, tight hug. “I’m sure I’ll be back soon.”

“But if you’re not…” she began, well-wishes forthcoming, clearly unsure how much it was appropriate to care about this uncertainty.

I stood in the doorway, took in that little box of hard-earned, fiercely-defended order, smiled at her. “I’ll be back.”

And I was, as promised. I was little more enlightened about my academic standing, and she was slightly singed, and maybe our best-laid plans had gone all to hell and we were still considering whether to go after them, but somehow it worked.


End file.
